Failure is the Only Option
by malfunctionjunction
Summary: Takes place after young Gru's hand made rocket is dejected by his mother. He needs a little shove towards self-confidence. GruOC interaction.


**A/N: **"Despicable Me" belongs to Illumination Entertainment. I, on the other hand, own the "Despicable Me" Blu-Ray disc that was bought at Wal-Mart for a total of 24 dollars and some cents and plus tax, that is not including the two sets of headphones I purchased as well. All that came to a total cost of 46 dollars and some cents and plus tax. *le sigh*

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><p><strong>~Failure is The Only Option~<strong>

"A success, but I think it landed in Mr. Garrison's backyard swimming pool." Said the girl with one eye to the boy with the penguin nose. And she was, more or less, correct in her observation as the rocket built of household appliances and tools had indeed landed in the backyard swimming pool of Mr. Garrison. There was a loud sputter of smoke, a loud sputter of light that was determined to be fire, and then a loud splashing of water. The splashing of water was the most obvious, the girl with one eye assumed, it was like a giant of sorts. That is, until the water came crashing down, never to return to the sky again. She calculated the amount of damage there was down the street, where the home of Mr. Garrison was, but she was in no mood to be condemned the criminal when she was in fact, the accomplice.

"Go away." Mumbled the boy with the penguin nose to the girl with one eye. Hunched into the soft green of the grass, his eyes did not follow the sputter trail of smoke that lingered in the sky as the girl did. He didn't care if it was to be found that he was the one who had built and launched the rocket, which had landed in the backyard swimming pool of Mr. Garrison. He imagined that the neighbors and on-goers were interested in that horrible crashing sound, that may or may not have destroyed the back of Mr. Garrison's house or his swimming pool, but he was not in the least bothered by it. With a stubborn tongue the boy with the penguin nose refused to let the fatty tears break free from his eye cased prison. He was not going to cry. He would not cry, not in front of anyone that is, and of all people she would not be a witness to one of his weakest moments.

But he had tried! He had tried so hard to please his mother. And he was more than positive that this, the rocket he had built from the prototype of the macaroni model, would have pleased her. He was absolutely positive that it would! When he saw the widening of her eyes, the gaping of her lips, the tilt of her head as the rocket launched into the sky, which he had built from hand, he knew that she was impressed by him. For a moment, just the briefest of moments, he was happy because he had made her proud. Or he thought he made her proud; after several seconds, not even a full minute he believed, she returned her frowning of lips, etched of brow, and sour attitude. Then she uttered it! She uttered the awful sound, that most terrible of sounds, "Eh". Was it necessary for her to put the neck roll in it too? He doubt she noticed it, but she did that whenever she wanted to put an emphasis on things, and that "Eh" was more than emphasis.

So the boy with the penguin nose was hurt. He was more than hurt, and the constriction of his heart, the reddening of his cheeks, the watering of his eyes, the hunching of his back just wouldn't stop. He wanted it to stop because he couldn't afford to cry, not with his mother wandering about in the house, not with the girl with one eye standing right near him, behind him exactly. He couldn't cry, but his body was aching for it. Why? Because he was hurt. He worked hard on that rocket, he worked tremendously hard!

"I don't see anyone else building _hand-made household_ rockets, do you?" Suddenly the girl with one eye grew angry, "I don't see anyone at all. Even with monkeys and Neil Armstrong trumpeting about, I don't see NASA forming a toddler mission project, do we?" Not a joyful child, that girl with one eye. Not one to show much compassion, that girl with one eye. Not one to be associated with, that girl with one eye. But she didn't like to see people sad, that girl with one eye. The weakness she held inside her, that little fragment of compassion, was what her father deemed as "bleeding hearts". Ha! And there would be no bleeding hearts in his family, not with the profession the family was leading. The girl with one eye had to agree, having a bleeding heart was a dangerous thing for her future occupation, but she didn't like seeing someone she had grown, somewhat attached to, sad.

When the boy with the penguin nose failed to react to her words, she grew angrier with him. Had she not helped him build the rocket? Had she not struck her fingers once or twice hammering away? Had she not taken a welding class, which is extremely rare for a nine year old to attend, just so she could help him with said rocket? Had she not helped him with the blue prints, and considering the boy's genius it was somewhat challenging for her to comprehend immediately. Yes, she understood that he was trying to impress his mother, and that was a difficult feat considering the woman's domineering stance, but she had helped too! And the rocket, in the final test, had worked! It worked very well! He should be proud, of himself! He should be hopping up and down with glory, standing tall, drinking champagne vigorously! Fine, maybe that one was a bit much, but he should be at least happy with his product. It worked, the darn thing actually worked. There he was, hunched down in a low crouch, next to the circular patch of grass that had been horribly charred by the rockets fumes. He was fortunate enough that his mother hadn't scolded him for ruining her backyard, which was only a smidge compared to the damage done to Mr. Garrison's backyard swimming pool.

It was awfully kind of fate to give Mr. Garrison and his family a vacationing spot in Hawaii. That being known, the girl with one eye wasn't as worried as she was initially.

So it shouldn't have been an utter, startling, awakening surprise to the boy with the penguin nose when he felt a sudden and sharp push on his back. He tumbled forwards, landing in the circular area where only the charred remains of grass stood. Oh, there were some patches of dirt, but it wasn't too bad. The grass had calmly cooled down back to its regular temperature. _Great_. Not only was his pride and heart hurt, his clothes were dirty. His good clothes; his mother was going throw a muffled fit. By muffle, she would grunt and glare hard at him, until he broke, and he would wash the clothes without making a sound. Knowing what was to occur afterwards made him angry; he exclaimed, "What do yoo think yoo 're dooing?"

"Stop being a baby!" The girl with one eye snapped, "Your rocket was a success! It was great!"

"But eet was not good enough for Mom!" The boy with the penguin noise bellowed out, anguish, "Yoo saw 'dat!"

Her patience grew thin. It was something her mother hated. "Yeah, I know! Now, think of the positive, you bumbling boob, and remember that something you built actually _worked_! I did not crack my finger nails for nothing!" To make her point known, which she knew that was currently unknown, she flashed her fingernails to him, waving them in his face. Once upon a time they had been a lively hot pink, not the hot pink had been etched off, revealing on the broken skin and broken nail. The sides were red and inflamed; she hastily removed the bandages just to show him then she speedily rewrapped them. He winced. He too had some charred skin on his hands from certain welding incidents, and they were incidents better left unsaid. He had worked hard, they had worked hard, and the end, despite his mom's response, the rocket did work. So maybe…possibly…things weren't too bad. After all, the rocket crashed into Mr. Garrison's backyard swimming pool. The boy with the penguin nose hated Mr. Garrison and his backyard swimming pool.

"You're getting the picture?" The girl with one eye rewrapped her wounds, "Because I will not continue to work with you until you understand the importance of success." She stared expectantly at him, waiting for his answer.

"One day Mom will be proud of me, wait and see." He stood to his feet and dusted what he could off his clothes, "Mom will like eet, one day."

_That was not what the girl with one eye wanted. _But it would have to do for now. Instead of rolling her eyes or throwing a nasty insult, she sighed and nodded her head. Hopefully, that would be the case. It would be the case for them; eventually their respective families would just throw a darn bone. They probably wouldn't even mind if the bone was licked dry; it was hard to get some substance in the world. As the boy with the penguin nose straightened his clothes, and she, the girl with one eye, gently caressed her throbbing fingers, they heard a sharp cry coming from the gates of the boy's white gate. Oh! What a scream it was, filled with horror and excitement, a strange mixture. Oh! The cries grew louder, screechy, and the boy with the penguin nose and the girl with one eye treaded to the fence, staring about.

"Garrison's house!" One called.

"I know. I know. It's on FIRE!" Another called.

"The roof, the roof is on fire! Hey, you think Gary will let me have his golfing clubs, you know, just if they're a bit smudged. You can get that fixed, you know." Called out a third.

"Hey Gru! Hilda!" Pounded the hearty pants of children they attended school with, "Some crazy villain's rocket fell into Garrison's pool!" And then there was another, nearly as breathless, "It destroyed the pool, but some fire came a kickin' out, and now the house is ablaze. The fire department is on the way, but…like guys, you gotta come!" Then they bounded off down the street where the majority of the neighborhood stood to watch the crumbling of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Garrison's house backyard swimming pool and house. It was a horrific sight to behold, but a mesmerizing one as well. Even though they were the guilty party, the guiltiest of them all because no child was fond of Mr. Garrison, they too wanted to see more.

"Eet seems 'dat Mr. Garrison will need a new house." Said the boy with the penguin nose to the girl with one eye. And a smile came onto his face, a wickedly curled smile. His cobalt blue eyes gleamed in the sunlight of summer, and he appeared to be, to be, oh she needed the word! _Villainous. _Yes, yes that was it, villainous, and that somehow, in spite of seeing what she thought of as 'villainous' she too smiled. It was a known that the children in the neighborhood didn't like Mr. Garrison, and if it meant that he would be leaving the neighborhood for an indefinite length of them, then…

"Ah yes! Lets go see what we can salvage!" Because they knew that there would be some salvaging indeed. The Garrisons were out in Hawaii, enjoying the time of their lives, and they left too many valuables in too many obvious places for them not to sneak.

And so they went, the boy with the penguin nose and the girl with one eye to the house that they had indirectly but happily destroyed. Oh, what fun they had in their salvaging! Oh, what fun they had in their thievery!

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><p><em>Unbelievable<em>! _Impossible_! _Outrageous_! The girl who wore the pink hat couldn't believe it. When the teacher told her that she would have to stay for summer school, her face dropped. When her teacher told her that there was a chance for that not to happen, her face shined with hope. When her teacher told her that all she needed to do was sign up for the summer reading rally, she nearly passed out from desperation. Luckily, the girl who wore the pink hat had her father who had a penguin nose beside her, so there was no passing out for her. To believe it, she was just a teeny, itsy, bit from declining. Who wanted to study during summer? Who wanted to go to summer school? Summer and school should never be put in the same sentence in that form.

And so when the girl who wore the pink hat was told of the development, her father, the man with the penguin nose, decided that it was best for her to enter the summer reading rally. She hated that! But she had to admit, and it wasn't something she liked to do regularly, it was better than sitting in a hot, boring room surrounded by boys who picked their noses and spat gumballs for the entire summer. Because summer was meant for the kids, and she was a kid. She deserved her summer! It didn't matter that she snatched some of Uncle Nefario's blue mix up stuff and spilled it into the cafeteria's spaghetti, which caused it to EXPLODE, just like Uncle Nefario said it would. It didn't matter that she had oh-so happened to break Billy Garrison's nose. The kid was a jerk, and when he made Agnes cry, it was up to her to make him pay. Besides, her father was happy with that development, knowing the boy's name. She didn't know why exactly, but she knew standing up for her little sister counted for something.

After signing up for the summer reading rally, the girl who wore the pink hat studied like she had never studied in her life. Truthfully, she had never actually studied in her life until that time, and consequently, it was complicated. But she managed! When she wasn't sliding off the railing of the staircase, she was studying. When she wasn't practicing with her dad's freeze ray, she was studying. When she wasn't learning how to boogie dance with the minions and being shot out of a cannon, she was studying. Margo, her oldest sister, was a big help too. The girl loved to read, and she knew, secretly, that she wanted the girl who wore the pink hat to love to read too. In a way, a very little way, the girl who wore the pink hat did enjoy reading, but not as much as she enjoyed reading with her father. He was the best! He studied with her when she was studying, and he made her read aloud, which she hated to do, just to make sure she knew how, in his words, "To tame 'de voyce, Edith." So she did. She hated reading aloud to others, but her father made it seem not so bad. They were in his study, and he listened, watched her as she read. He was silent, always silent, and he spoke only when she got caught on some words, which he would say, "Sound eet out, Keeten."

And so she did. And she got it! She actually got it.

The girl who wore the pink hat would never tell, would never tell how afraid she was when she and her father had made it to the building where she was going to take her test. As her father explained to her on the drive there, "'De teacher said that yoo are an exceptional reader, Edith." He went on, "Yoo tested higher 'den the average, Keeten. Yoo will be with the oldur' children." And by older children, her father meant high school. She was just a bit afraid, not much, not of the building or the test, but just a bit. Really, she didn't want to let go of her father's hand either, but he said, "Eet will be fine, Keeten." He gave her a tight hug, "Now, do yoor best." She promised her father that she would because she believed that he would be waiting for her after the test was over. It wasn't smart for someone to tease a villain's daughter; she knew everyone knew, they were just too afraid to say it out loud. She got that. Daddy is a super villain has its perks, minus the freeze ray and other sweet toys she got to play with.

She took the rally test, afraid out of her wits because it was a combination of English and Reading comprehension, but she finished it! She was the sixth to last to finish it, but she finished it. When she ran to the open arms of her father, "So proud of you, Keeten," it almost seemed worth it.

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><p>"Third place!" She plopped in the back seat, exasperated and disappointed, "All that for third place!"<p>

What a bite! The girl who wore the pink hat was more than positive that she was going to get first place. All that studying! She hated studying! The frustration she felt, the disappointment that was present, was unending. Arms folded across her chest, she glared stubbornly at the golden trophy that showed proof of her third place win. She wasn't going to like it. She wasn't going to love it. She wasn't going to appreciate it because she had worked hard on that test, studied like she had never studied before. Once she got home, she was going to mix up Uncle Nefario's experiments with the help of Phil and Stewart.

Then the girl who wore the pink hat would forget about this ever happening. She would return to her normal mayhem, her mayhem!

"Eet is not so bad, no?" The father with the penguin nose interrupted the girl's thoughts, "Third place is good!" The girl shrugged, not entirely convinced.

"But it isn't first place, Dad." She sighed, "Not even second."

"Yoo placed!" He exclaimed in joy, fatherly proud-ness, "Yoo did something that most could not!"

"But it's not first." Then came a whimper, a soft whimper that tumbled out of the girl's mouth so quickly that she couldn't gobble it back up. Her father heard that whimper, and his cobalt blue eyes looked into the light, grayish blue of his daughter, the girl who wore the pink hat.

_**It worked! It actually worked!**_

"Yoo did it." The father knew that the girl grew suspicious at certain times. Somehow the child managed to pick up on marks, marks that carried various meanings. While he wanted her to understand, to know, what she had done was incredible in its own right, he couldn't directly state it as he had done before. "Did yoo not pass?" He turned back slightly, only slightly, to watch her constructed reaction.

"I don't...have to go to summer school now." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, "But Dad, I wanted to win!" The last part came out in a strangled whine.

"Did yoo fail?" Asked the father with the penguin nose again.

"Well, no, I didn't." Said the girl who wore the pink hat, "That doesn't mean I won."

"Yoo did not fail." The father replied with conviction, "And now, yoo do not have to go to summer school. And when yoo return to school, yoo will impress the others with yoor accomplishments." The girl who wore the pink hat looked up and thought the words over. Tumbled and tumbled they did inside her brain, and in spite of her current disposition, it was no less true than the fact that she had earned third place. No more studying! No more studying! She would at long last finally do what she intended to do for summer vacation. Of course there would be certain regulations and restrictions to what she was able to do; during Thanksgiving break, in one week the girl who wore the pink hat accomplished moving the earth's gravitational pull when she happened to stumble upon an experiment her Uncle Nefarious was working on. The news team and many renowned scientists had recently dubbed the incident "Unknown Noodle Pull Incident". To the girl's luck, they had yet to pin any evidence against her let alone come to the conclusion that an eight year old was the cause of the sudden and unexplainable shift.

It was better left unsaid…unspoken of…although the father was incredibly proud of his middle child.

"I don't have to go to summer school." The girl who wore the pink hat said with a triumphant smile, "And I guess I did do better than I thought I would."

"Dat is correct!" He hummed.

She scooted her bottom on the seat, "Are we still going to Maximum Palace?"

"Yoor grandma, Dr. Nefarious, and yoor seesturs are waiting already." Before the girl could ask the question, "Hopefully, the minions have not caused too much damage al'ready."

The girl who wore the pink hat smiled at her father with the penguin nose. Reassuringly he returned the smile, and they drove off to where the grandmother, the sisters, the uncle, and many minions were waiting for them. _It actually worked, you see? Please do think of something good for once!_

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><p>"Um Dad…" The girl who wore the pink hat said once they arrived at Maximum Palace. Hand in hand they walked from the back area where the father had parked his car.<p>

"Yes Edeeth?" The father with the penguin nose responded, not noticing the bright light.

She said nothing at first, too amazed with the sight, but eventually, "Why is Maximum Palace on fire?"

"…"

It was! It was! Maximum Palace was on fire, on the inside and out. There was no need to worry for the grandmother, the sisters, and the uncle were safely out in the parking lot, watching the palace submit to the growing flames. Others were there as well, for Maximum Palace was the place that every child wanted to go for a birthday party or a kiddie baseball celebration. Even the many minions, all excited and frightened in their wonder of fire, escaped with the help of an old catapult that was placed in the lobby. The poor catapult did not survive the crash onto the parking lot; neither did the several cars that had the most unfortunate happening to be within landing space of the catapult. No people or minions were harmed, excluding the extensive damage done to the restaurant and customers vehicles, but the statue of Ferdinand Maximum went mysteriously missing on that day.

"Kevin! Nam ynots ytterp eht tog?" Asked Phil.

"Yeah! Yeah! Azzip oot! Stuffed Crust!" Exclaimed Kevin.

And together they said, along with their minion brethren in perfect, harmonic union, "Yay!"

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><p><strong>AN: **My summer vacation is coming to a close, and I felt that I had to complete one of my many oneshots saved on my jump drive. Originally, Gru's accent was going to be written out, but it didn't seem right and so began the challenge that is Gru's accent. Tell me if I worked it out correctly because h-e-double hockey sticks was that a ticker. I am 99.999% sure that Margo is going to be the brains when she's older (not that she already is, I know she is), but isn't it fun to think of the crazy wild child as a secret genius? Because I love Edith, I wanted the second half to be about Edith and Gru. Weird, right? I had an entirely different approach to the subject, but one day at work I was all, "Screw it, I'm gonna have some fun." And I went all Dr. Seuss, which was going to be a quote for the story but said 'Screw it' after the work was completed. I like to believe that I got Gru and Edith more or less in character, and that little Gru, who I felt horrible for, was devious but sympathetic. As Julie Andrews once said, "Everything Gru is today is because of Marlena a.k.a Gru's mom."

The ending is my attempt to stick with humor. I am not a humorist, and DM is a hilarious movie. But if it was drama/angst/or something in between, I could totally do that, or fit a bit of humor inside, do you understand?

Whatever happened to the girl with one eye? Does she become a hero or a villain? Heck, she may be an accountant? Mr. Perkin's secretary at the beginning of the movie, and no, she has two eyes…unless, nah, just joking.

If you guys did read the entire story and this silly little author's note, thank you so much. It is greatly appreciated. People, please hand out constructive criticism, it is always welcomed and needed. I intend to do more DM work in the future, you know when university work isn't kicking my arse.

Thank you all and have a great day!


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